[NYAPRS Enews] Crain's: No Housing is Affordable Without a Job

[Briana Gilmore]

NYAPRS Note: In a city like NYC, the balance between affordable housing and low-wage jobs can hinge on how well local governance balances both priorities. The manufacturing employers who supply local businesses should be protected for the valuable resource they provide the local workforce. However, these job sites are increasingly marginalized at the outer edges of the city's boroughs as rising housing rates push people in poverty out in greater number and larger concentric circles from the center of Manhattan. Sites previously zoned for manufacturing may be turned into so-called gentrified residential spaces where low-income workers and residents cannot afford to live and work. Balanced housing policy is instrumental to combating this trend, as are jobs that come along with a developer's promises<http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150302/REAL_ESTATE/303019994/towers-are-coming-to-astoria-queens-but-will-jobs#utm_source=Daily%20Alert&utm_medium=alert-html&utm_campaign=Newsletters>. But a short-term solution to either protect low-income housing or protect jobs doesn't serve individuals in the long-term, not in NYC or in other geographically small cities facing this  issue, like San Francisco. Many are waiting to see how Mayor de Blasio and his administration tackles this tension.

No Housing is Affordable Without a Job
Crain's New York; 2/27/2015

There's an old saying popular with skeptics of government initiatives: The best social program is a job. But these days, too many jobs don't pay enough to make ends meet in New York City, where housing costs have risen three times as fast as median income during the past 15 years.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has responded with a relentless push for affordable housing<http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150220/REAL_ESTATE/150229991>, but business advocate Leah Archibald has a saying of her own that he would do well to keep in mind: No housing is affordable without a good job.
Ms. Archibald's north Brooklyn nonprofit helps industrial businesses, which the mayor should treasure because they pay well, provide opportunities for advancement and often don't require a college degree. They make everything from dumplings to marine lighting to custom suits, have loyal customers and would like to expand their operations. Yet they are being squeezed by the hot market for residential real estate and threatened by the mayor's housing policy.
Although these businesses operate in areas zoned for manufacturing, their landlords are seeking the higher rents and sale prices they'd reap from residential development. This expectation has sprung from such trends as the conversion of commercial space into loft apartments, residential projects done in manufacturing zones with zoning variances or special permits, hotel construction, the proliferation of self-storage facilities and even new schools.
The Bloomberg administration kept some of these forces at bay by establishing industrial business zones, which conveyed a promise that the areas would not be rezoned. But Mr. de Blasio has not reinforced this pledge. Indeed, his administration has weakened it by not taking a clear position. That's left open the possibility that apartments could be put into the zones, even though administration claims that "workforce housing" would be compatible with light manufacturing are scoffed at by the owners of businesses in these areas that rely on noisy equipment and trucks.
Manufacturing in the city is a shell of its former self, but it's a hard shell, with 75,000 employees providing products and services for other local businesses. That's roughly the number of affordable apartments that the mayor proposes to create over 10 years. If he creates those units but loses our industrial jobs to low-wage sectors whose workers require subsidized housing, he will have accomplished nothing.
Saving industrial jobs would cost the city almost nothing. With words alone, Mr. de Blasio could signal to property owners that their thriving industrial tenants are here to stay. We cannot imagine what he's waiting for.
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150227/OPINION/150229861/no-housing-is-affordable-without-a-job
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